It May Be Time for Yankees To Cut Giambi

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As the Yankees have struggled to a .500 record in the early going, the focus on how to “fix” the team has focused on the pitching staff and the difficulties of Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy, the team’s two hurlers on the rare side of 20-something. This weekend, Hank Steinbrenner raised the possibility that Joba Chamberlain, another young pitcher, will switch out of the bullpen and rescue the rotation. Yet the offense has also been a disappointment, and it’s something that the Yankees can improve far more easily than they can the pitching, starting by benching, trading, or releasing Jason Giambi.

It is far simpler for the Yankees to do what they can to improve the offense than it will be for them to force the pitching staff to take a leap forward into maturity and consistency. The latter is a function of time and experience, the former a function of knowing when to stop forcing a bad hand. In this analogy, Giambi is the equivalent of trying to win with a pair of deuces.

Giambi’s contract has long since become an albatross to the Yankees, not because of his development into a defensive millstone or his subsequent brush with the steroids inquisition, but for reasons that were obvious when the Yankees signed him to a seven-year contract (with optional eighth year) in 2001: At 30 years old, Giambi was a painfully slow player with a weak glove, and it was only logical to project that, as time went by, he would become older, slower, and increasingly immobile. The team’s need for a potent first baseman and Giambi’s status as one of the best hitters in baseball, with career .309 AVG/.416 OBA/.552 SLG rates apparently outweighed these concerns. The Yankees would have to hope that Giambi’s bat would continue to thrive even as the rest of the package deteriorated over the length of the deal.

Until 2007, that was largely what happened. Though the Yankees got only one .300 season out of Giambi, his first in pinstripes, and 2004 was lost to illness and injury, the walks and home runs kept coming. It is no exaggeration to say that from 2002 to 2006, Giambi was the best .266 hitter in baseball, with a high home run rate and well over 100 walks a season. Injuries, when combined with Giambi’s odd inability to hit when not playing the field, became a problem as his playing time eroded in the 2004 to 2006 period, but as a hitter Giambi had actually become underrated.

That changed in 2007. Giambi opened the season looking like the hitter the Yankees had signed, hitting .322/.404/.517 in April. At the end of that month, his bat quit, possibly never to be resuscitated. Even before another injury forced him to miss nine weeks at midseason, he had gone into a slump, one which continued after he returned. From May 1 to the end of the 2007 season, Giambi hit .192/.333/.389. In light of that finish, his .109/.288/.283 averages in 2008 seem less a season-opening slump than the continuation of a career-ending death-spiral.

Getting rid of Giambi is, on one level, simple. He is in the final year of his contract. The Yankees have the option of retaining him in 2009 for the low price of $22 million, something that was unlikely even seven years ago, or paying him $5 million to go away. Since they are on the hook for this year’s salary and the buyout regardless of whether Giambi plays for them or not, he might as well not play for them. Getting rid of Giambi for some kind of value is more problematic. The Yankees would have to find a trading partner that was (1) in need of a poor defensive first baseman or DH, (2) had some high-salaried object of their own they were eager to be rid of, (3) believed that Giambi’s bat could be revived with a change of scenery, and (4) was amenable to Giambi, since he has a full no-trade clause. Even then, the Yankees would have to kick in the cash difference between the two contracts, plus the buyout money. That this combination of factors would roll up all at once seems so unlikely that proposing any trade scenario would be an act of purist fantasy; hence an outright release seems the most likely path to a Giambifree world.

Failing an acquisition, the Yankees do have the ability to replace Giambi with internal candidates. A job-sharing arrangement involving Shelley Duncan, Morgan Ensberg, Jorge Posada, and others doesn’t sound terrifically potent, but remember, the purpose here is not to create the next Lou Gehrig but simply to give the Yankees a first base combination that would do more for the overall offense than Giambi.

Purging Giambi would not solve all of the team’s offensive problems. Robinson Cano’s slump has been even more profound, but unless he’s masking a physical problem, the 25-year-old has age and recent performance speaking in favor of a rebound. Johnny Damon remains a subpar offensive left fielder at best, and Jorge Posada has been uncharacteristically impatient, perhaps trying to make up for his injury. Still, winning in baseball is a matter of scoring more runs than you allow. Right now the Yankees are in negative territory. Moving on from their superannuated first baseman would be the quickest path to improvement.

Mr. Goldman writes the Pinstriped Bible for yesnetwork.com and is the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.


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